Tuesday, July 26, 2005

A century after New York became the first American city to track people with infectious diseases as a way to halt epidemics, officials here propose a similar system to monitor people with diabetes, a noncontagious disease.

....Conceived after a sharp rise in diabetes deaths over the past 20 years, the plan would require medical labs to report to the city the results of a certain type of test that indicates how well individual patients are controlling their diabetes

By pinpointing problem patients, then intervening in their care, Frieden said the city can improve thousands of lives. 'I don't think we can afford not to do anything,' he said.

And what, exactly, will they do? Put them in jail to control their diet, make them exercise regularly and force feed them their medication? And you have to wonder, does the New York public health department have so much extra money that they can afford to track down every poorly controlled diabetic and supervise their care?